Another week, another meaningless survey

People aren’t sat at home thinking how they can get round the rules, Paul Edwards of law firm Hill Dickinson revealed exclusively to Insurance Times this week. Which is certainly reassuring news for rule abiding citizens everywhere.

So what are they doing while they are “sat” at home? Amongst other things, it could be that they are responding to in-depth surveys being carried out by the aforementioned Hill Dickinson.

One such survey (of an unspecified number of unspecified respondents*) has shockingly revealed that people are a bit less optimistic about the (unspecified) benefits of the Legal Aid, Sentency and Punishy Offendy reforms than they were back in April, pre-launch.

In March this year 86% of “people” told Hill Dick’s researchers that they thought LASBO would “reduce overall spend”. Since then, that figure has plummeted to a mere 69%.

It could be, Edwards explains, that people might have got a bit carried away with all the “spin about how good the reforms were going to be” earlier in the year. Or perhaps, he muses philosophically, ”69% is just a fairly reasonable number.”

The survey also revealed that most people now think “the number of exaggerated and/or fraudulent claims will increase” (up from 45%) in March. But Edwards is having none of it. The reforms will reduce fraud, he predicted confidently, “despite the results of the survey”.

It’s not all good news though, with Edwards predicting that because “a lot of fraud is motivated by non-legal factors; it’s down to the economy,” there will always be fraud in the insurance system.

What a miserable prospect. Bet you wish you hadn’t read that now!

“…and do you believe exaggerated and/or fraudulent claims will increase?”

*There are some indications that “industry players” may have been involved.